Signing up to our mailing list means that you will receive occasional emails about events and developments relating to Soteria Brighton (no more than once a month on average). You can unsubscribe from the mailing list at any time. We will not share your details with any other organisation.

Home

Welcome to the Soteria Brighton website. Soteria Brighton was formed in 2011 with the aim of establishing a Soteria House and related services in Brighton for people experiencing ‘psychosis’ (including what is sometimes referred to as ‘schizophrenia’).

Promoting Choice

We believe that it is time to establish a greater diversity of services for people experiencing ‘psychosis’, alternatives to traditional psychiatric services which more closely reflect what service users say they need, and which do not rely on coercion/compulsion, or on such extensive use of antipsychotic medication, but rather on collaboration. The Soteria model provides this, with supporting evidence from Soteria projects and other similar approaches around the world.

The Soteria model originated in the early 1970s in the US, a residential community established by Loren Mosher for people experiencing psychosis for the first time, in order to research how they fared in a psychosocial environment with minimal medication, but substantial interpersonal support. What they found was that people did just as well, if not better, and with significantly less medication. Further details about our aims, as well as the Soteria model and the evidence base for it can be found on our About page.

Soteria Brighton

As yet we do not provide any services, but we are currently looking at ways of developing the Soteria approach in the community, such as a managing medication support-group, a Soteria Café project, and we hold regular “Soteria in the Pub” events.

Soteria Brighton consists of a core group of around 20 members who meet regularly to develop the group, and a growing mailing list of those who wish to keep up with developments and support us in other ways. The core group consists of individuals with a personal and/or professional interest in developing the Soteria approach. We believe that it is healthy to have a mixture of professionals, carers, and those who have experienced ‘psychosis’ in our group, and welcome anyone who has an interest in seeing a greater variety of mental health services in Brighton to our meetings. If you are interested in becoming a member, or finding out more about it, do please get in touch (details on our Contact page above) or by coming along to meet us at one of our “Soteria in the Pub” events.

“Soteria in the Pub” events

Our regular “Soteria in the Pub” fund-raising events are aimed at promoting awareness of the issues surrounding the current state of Mental Health Services and in effecting change. The events are usually held every two months on a Thursday evening at The Brunswick in Holland Road, Hove. We invite speakers who are specialized in or have an interest in the subject and these are followed by an audience question and answer session. These events are proving to be a very popular and enjoyable way of finding out about current research and other developments in the field, sharing ideas and meeting others with a common interest. We would love to see you there! Details of upcoming events can be found on our Events page, or on the side bar of the website.

Supporting Soteria Brighton

Apart from becoming a member, other ways of getting involved are to subscribe to our mailing list. You will find a small form to do so at the top right of this page. Signing up to the mailing list means that you’ll get notice of any forthcoming events. You might also like to support us by making a donation to the group. Making a donation helps us to develop our work. Currently we have set ourselves the target of raising £5000, primarily to support the work that we need to do, but also because we need to generate an income of £5000 to become a registered charity. If you would like and are able to help us meet our target then you can do so via our donation page, or by coming along to our fundraising events.